


chosen, given, found

by jubilantly



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: Other, please finale do not take this away from me, spoilers for SiH38
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-31
Updated: 2019-07-31
Packaged: 2020-07-27 23:08:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20054050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jubilantly/pseuds/jubilantly
Summary: After everything, Benjamin and Blue J travel, and are fond of each other, and try to name the plant fox.





	chosen, given, found

**Author's Note:**

  * For [smallpolarbear](https://archiveofourown.org/users/smallpolarbear/gifts).

> Thank you Lu for [tweeting a thing](https://twitter.com/smallpolar_bear/status/1155810707570663426) and causing this fic, and also for contributing many of the funniest bits.

0.

It’s not really even leaving, what they’re doing, because they’ll come back; they’ve got magic and everything, and Hella made Adaire grudgingly explain some mapmaking to them, so they won’t get lost, and they don’t plan on settling anywhere else, either – Benjamin has been left in a way that makes him never want to just up and leave his family, and they both have their home here still, this is where they grew up this is where there will always be a piece of themselves, but… they’re leaving for a while.

If you’re the Ranger, and the world has just become upside-down and wider than before, if you’re the Ranger and there is all kinds of new things to discover and you’re an adult now besides, going somewhere else isn’t even an _ if_.

If your most important person is the Ranger and your most annoying and most important character trait is that you want to know everything, ditto.

So, it’s not really leaving, but they are going, somewhere, anywhere. Out into the world.

Not adventuring, just exploring. They’ve had that talk, with various and sundry parents and aunts and uncles and well-meaning adults they sort of know, and they’re setting out, with permission and blessing (bad choice of words) and irresponsible amounts of good advice.

The dawn is only just in coming, suns getting more in the sky, all parents have been hugged goodbye, lunch is packed, boots are laced, and Throndir is seeing them off.

He comes running up to them, as they’re leaving, and presses a flower into their hands, and says, “from Ephrim, so that you’ll always find home again.”

And they thank him, awkwardly, and tell him to thank Ephrim for them, and he looks a bit sheepish once they’re just standing there.

“Good luck,” he says, “Sorry to be giving more grown-up advice, but, don’t be stupid, alright? We’ve been stupid enough for several generations of people. I don’t know if you’re hoping to be like us, but if you are, maybe don’t. Like, really, don’t be like your dads. Don’t end up inside any swords, don’t… just don’t. Your dads are great, but. You know.”

Blue J makes a face, but they laugh, too.

“Thanks, Throndir.”

Throndir shrugs, sheepish still.

“And… I’m not old and I’m certainly not wise, but what I’ve learned, aside from don’t be stupid, is – have each other’s backs. You only have each other out there.”

“And my fox,” Blue J says, even as they grab for Benjamin’s hand.

“Right,” Throndir says. “Right, of course, I’m sorry for forgetting.”

“I wouldn’t forget Kodiak.” Blue J grins, and Throndir grins too and shakes his head.

“I know you wouldn’t. Hey, does the fox have a name by now?”

“Not yet.”

“That’s a thing to bring back from your travels, then.”

“I guess.”

But Blue J is smiling still, and they hug Throndir, and Throndir moves away from the two of them and motions for them to leave, and then they’re going, and they’re going, and they’re leaving.

Setting out into a new dawn of a new Hieron, and all that, and still holding hands.

1.

They’ve been walking for less than an hour, have only just left the University behind, when Benjamin frowns at the fox winding between his legs.

“We really should’ve come up with a name by now, huh.”

For a moment, Blue J doesn’t answer, because they’re trying to skip from one rock to another, and then they’ve made the jump and jump again, down into damp high grass to walk alongside Benjamin.

“Well, yeah,” they say, “but there’s a lot of words in the world.”

“And every day there’s more.”

“And every day there’s more, yeah.”

They walk; the grass is ever higher, around them, reaching to their elbows, reaching _ for _ their elbows quite possibly, and there’s a dozen layered canopies above them, colouring and filtering the light of a dozen suns, and the University, when they turn around for one last glance from a bend in the path, is very small behind them.

“You could just call it Fox and be done with it,” says Benjamin, and snorts with laughter when Blue J huffs.

“Absolutely not.”

Benjamin leans against Blue J a little, as they walk next to each other, and Blue J knocks their shoulder against his, and he reaches for their hand.

"Come up with a better one, then."

"_You _ come up with a better one, Mr Studier of Books."

The fox is still underfoot, and then it sees something off the path and chases madly into the underbrush, and they both stop, and wait for it.

And wait.

After a bit, they sit down, across from each other, on the ground; they're not worried, because that's just how it goes and the fox always comes back and will probably come bearing gifts, but there isn't any sense in running after it, and it feels wrong to leave when the world is suddenly not following any of the old rules, so they wait.

"Really, though," Blue J says, "it would be useful to have a name to yell when this happens."

2.

“Petal.” 

“That’s dumb.”

“It _ is _ but you don’t have to say it!”

Benjamin is laughing as he says it, and Blue J is smiling at him, and on Blue J's shoulders the fox is yipping and twitching and holding its nose into a breeze that is promising water not too far ahead.

"Bloom," says Blue J, and immediately pulls a face.

Benjamin looks at the fox, and at the green all around above below him, and searches for more words, haphazardly.

"Liana."

"Also a no, I think. Good name, but not for this one."

They walk on, in companionable silence made less silent by the fox still yipping, and then the sound of rushing water, and the fox leaps off Blue J's shoulder and towards the sound, and Blue J takes off after it, joyful, and Benjamin follows, as fast as his lanky legs can carry him.

It's a ways off still, the water, but they break through the green before that, part a curtain of leaves and sneeze in the sudden bright light of the suns and find themselves in a meadow stretching far and bending oddly, leading them to where a waterfall is directionless and boisterous and full of mist and rainbows.

They catch their breath, and stare, and stare, at the light and the flowers and whatever it is that is chasing through the air above and beside the meadow.

It’s a place that is not just unfamiliar in its specifics but unfamiliar to its very core, the very idea of it preposterous, and it’s very likely hostile in some way, and that doesn’t make it less beautiful at all, it just makes it… more of everything.

Benjamin, still a little out of breath, can’t stop staring.

"You think the world was this beautiful when my dad and his friends were travelling it?"

"I don't think they'd have saved it if it hadn't been at least kind of beautiful."

"That's… yeah," Benjamin says, and shakes his head, and, "Leaflet."

"Oh, that's bad." Blue J grins, thinks for a moment, grins wider. "Shrub."

3.

From the whole thing being ridiculous, it’s a short way to it being funny, and they’ve stopped making serious suggestions entirely a few days into their journey.

“Weed,” Blue J says, with as straight a face as they can manage, and Benjamin groans, but his face can’t quite keep disapproving.

“Don’t make me laugh while I’m trying not to fall off a tree,” he says, from where he’s sitting on a branch very securely but with his hands gripping at the bark as if he’s about to fall off.

“Don’t go climbing into trees if you don’t want to be in them,” says Blue J, but they frown up at him, and check that their pack is still safely on their back and all pockets are closed, and then they start to climb up too, much faster than Benjamin did earlier.

Benjamin huffs.

“I just wanted to look at… I didn’t know what it was! I wanted to know! We’re out here to explore things, right?”

Blue J swings a leg over the branch and sits, comfortably, and swings their feet a little.

“Yeah, but still.”

“I know how to climb up trees.”

“You do.”

“Anyway, the thing’s gone.” And Benjamin has relaxed a little, now, with Blue J on the branch next to him, and is swinging his feet too, though still not looking down too much.

There’s a drop to below them where they had been walking over moss, and then from there again very far to what passes for the ground nowadays, through which a sun shines briefly just before noon and then another at sunset, making everything glow from underneath in reds and oranges, disorienting and beautiful.

“Lunchtime, I think,” says Blue J, after a minute of swinging their feet and looking into the distance, where a village is upside down, and they maneuver their pack in front of them and pull out food, and shove Benjamin’s lunch into his hands before he’s even properly held them out, and swat half-heartedly at the fox trying to climb into their lap and eat some of the precious food they still have from home, tasting of home.

They give the fox food, though, and it curls up between the two of them, and Blue J looks down at it, and down off the branch they’re sitting on, and then flicks the fox’s ear and looks at Benjamin again.

“You think it’d be worth it to name it Tree just so we’ve got a Tree on a tree on a tree happening here?”

4.

They make camp, two days later, on a plateau that is occasionally perpendicular to everything else; use a gigantic leaf for a tent, consider a campfire but quickly decide that it's too warm for fire. Benjamin makes glowing little balls of light float around them instead for light, because there may be many suns now, but not at night, and especially not at night where everything is densely packed with plants and there’s rock on several sides.

The lights are soft yellows and blue-purples and some orange, and Benjamin has to concentrate to make more of them, but continues making more of them anyway, while Blue J looks on still, like the first time, in wonder, and fondness, and wonder again.

“I’m already impressed,” they say, at some point, softly, when Benjamin has sent a swarm of tiny lights to dance around them, “you don’t have to make your magic all tired to get me, you’ve already got me.”

Benjamin, blushing, forgets to concentrate, and the lights flicker and go out, and after a quiet moment in the dark, he conjures lights again, only a handful, warm yellow, and lets them hover above the two of them.

There’s a sheepish look on his face, but not particularly repentant.

Blue J shakes their head at him, and stretches out their legs to nudge their foot against his knee.

“I mean it,” they start, mostly for show, to say what they’ve said at this point more times than Benjamin should be able to count, and then they’re interrupted by their fox leaping back into the tent and into their lap, yowling.

“Oh, for… what’d you do now, dumbass?”

The fox lies down, sulking, and Benjamin laughs, and the moment is over, but they’ve had it before and will have it again.

"Inflorescence." He pronounces it very carefully, and Blue J makes a noise of disbelief.

"What are you, an archivist? An _ academ– _ ohh you _ are _ an academic–"

Benjamin, laughing, kicks at their leg with his bare foot, ineffectively.

“I’m not that bad.”

“You aren’t bad at all. Now, your great Fantasmo, who, granted, I only met for five minutes once…”

“What about him?”

“He’d probably come up with an even worse name.”

Benjamin laughs again, surprised.

“I actually, when we were talking about names when you found the fox, I asked Fantasmo about it once–”

Blue J, too, is laughing now.

“Of course you did.”

“Hey!”

“I’m not saying that’s a bad thing!”

“Well, alright.”

They settle, both of them, again, content, and the fox gets up to bat at the floating lights, and Blue J watches it, and watches Benjamin watching it.

“What did Fantasmo say?”

“He said it’s purely sentimental nonsense to name something that has itself no concept of names.”

“Of _ course _ he did.”

5.

“I still don’t get Fantasmo’s point,” Blue J says, when they’re packing up the next morning and trying to clear away the slightly wilted leaf-tent, “but I do have to respect the guy’s ability to be like that all the time.”

Benjamin, in the process of reorganizing his pack and throwing out some things he doesn’t remember picking up, scrunches up his face in thought.

“Like… if the fox wouldn’t give itself a name, and doesn’t know what a name is, then why should we give it a name, that’s what his point was.”

“That’s nonsense, how would he know if the fox knows what a name is?”

Benjamin, pointing excitedly, forgets about his pack.

“Right! Right, that’s what I _ said _, and he went off on a tangent about language barriers and then we got distracted by talking about species and the difficulties of naming something if it’s also the only one of its kind, and would you give it one name or two in that case, and then I sort of got distracted.”

The tent-leaf collapses, again, on Blue J’s foot, and they sigh and kick it away and leave it where it is.

“That’s some archivist logic.”

Benjamin snorts.

“Don’t say that, he’ll somehow sense it and get annoyed.”

“Because he doesn’t like pattern magic, you’ve said. Hey, maybe we should have asked for name help from… Lem?”

“Probably would have been even worse than what my dad said,” and Benjamin finally closes his pack and gets up and swings the pack onto his shoulders, and blinks at Blue J, who is looking at him like they don’t know whether they should laugh or not.

“Who all did you _ ask _ about the name thing, how do we not have a name yet–”

“Only Fantasmo and my parents.”

“Well, what did your parents say?”

“Mum said it should be your choice. And dad said, and you’re allowed to laugh at this, he said,” and Benjamin contorts his face into something very ineffectively concentrated and slightly confused, “Leaf...y?”

Blue J cackles.

“Yeah, okay. You did suggest Leaflet, so I guess the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree, but wow. Speaking of your dad though, if you so much as think of giving my little buddy a weird long-winded title…”

Benjamin huffs.

“Not likely, no.”

“Sorry,” Blue J says, and Benjamin smiles at them, and their hands link, loosely, habitually. “Ready to do some more walking?”

6.

They dismiss a lot of names for belonging or having belonged to moth people they know, or moth people Blue J knew, while they walk on and make camp more times, through forests and oversized thickets and a confusion of foliage above which a lake shimmers, more waterfalls more tilted villages in near and far distance.

It’s good, to be walking and to be together, and they keep saying this, in different words and often without words.

It’s good to be somewhere new, to figure out how to be part of the world born to give them a future but born not for them, and they walk and they look at everything and they pick up pebbles and press small blossoms between the pages of Benjamin’s books, and they don’t have to talk about much because they know all of each other’s secrets already, but they never do run out of things to talk about.

What they run out of, in time, are name ideas for the fox.

Which is alright, probably, but kind of annoying nonetheless, and stupid.

The fox is on Benjamin’s shoulders today, and Benjamin keeps trying to get its tickling leaves out of his face to no avail, and Blue J is doing absolutely nothing to help.

“Any new name ideas inspired by your current plight,” they say, and Benjamin glares at them, and shakes his head.

“Can’t ask anyone else either, out here.”

“Well, we were planning to stop in a village soon, right?” Blue J is grinning.

Benjamin nods, and pushes at the fox again.

“Just the right thing for introducing yourself to strangers. Hey do you have name suggestions for this horrid little creature who we’re stuck with.”

Blue J gasps, mock-offended, even as Benjamin scratches the fox behind its ears.

“I mean, yeah. And I think we’ve asked everyone back home who wouldn’t be annoyed or say something stupid.”

“Did you ask your dad?”

“Yeah.”

They keep walking, and are silent wading through a tiny stream crossing their path, and then Benjamin raises his eyebrows at Blue J.

“And? What’d your dad say?”

“He said,” Blue J stops walking, squares their shoulders oddly the way they do when they lower their voice to somewhere it doesn’t belong, “_it will come to you in time_.”

Benjamin laughs.

“Should have expected that probably. And he’s probably right, too.”

“Sometimes dads are right,” Blue J says, solemnly, with the fond look of someone thinking of home, and Benjamin smiles.

7.

So names are given up on, and wandering continues, with different things to make jokes of and get unexpectedly serious about, and they visit one village and another and talk to people who are both more and less confused than the two of them about the state of the world, being as they are unaware of the why but also unaware of the extent of what has happened.

They climb more trees, they fall into a lake that’s hidden by its angle to the landscape around it, Benjamin spends some of their money on a notebook in which they both try to draw all the things they see, badly but truthfully, for looking back on and for eventually showing everyone back home.

They climb more trees, trees everywhere of all sizes, and the fox too climbs more trees, and of one of these it is apparently so fond that it refuses to leave it when Benjamin and Blue J have packed up their camp and gotten distracted saying silly things to each other and distracted again by the sunrise and by the familiar joy of being hand in hand out here, together and with the world spread out for them.

But they’re not distracted anymore, and the fox is still on a thin branch, wrapped around it, eyes half closed.

Benjamin has his pack ready, has started to leave, but there’s no leaving without their companion, and so he stands there and watches Blue J look up into the tree and bounce on the balls of their feet and huff, annoyed.

“Hey,” Blue J says, to the fox. “Hey, come on. We’re friends, you like me, come _ on_. Buddy. Bud.”

“Oh,” Benjamin says, as the fox stretches a little.

Blue J turns around, confused, half-alarmed.

“What is it?”

Benjamin shakes his head and smiles a little, and when Blue J isn’t looking around for danger anymore, he answers, chooses his words as well as he can.

“Bud. A name. A growing plant and a friend both.”

“Oh,” Blue J echoes, finally, smile spreading across their face. “_Oh_.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah!”

They grin at each other, and then Blue J turns to the fox again.

“Hey, Bud,” they say, not annoyed anymore, but excited, nearly vibrating with it. “Time to do some more exploring, you coming?”

And the fox unwraps itself, grudgingly but it does, and jumps down, and Blue J turns to Benjamin and Benjamin starts walking, slow enough that Blue J can catch up easily, hand already outstretched to be taken in theirs.


End file.
